Free Sacrifice the Wicked by Karina Cooper

apart.
    Jonathan’s was like Simon’s. A kind of bio-magical control over his own body. Internal; useful without being obvious. The kind of thing a good missionary could use to keep himself at the top of his game.
    Until it broke down.
    “Hey, buddy,” Simon offered quietly.
    “Simon.” Jonathan didn’t straighten. As his body trembled in Simon’s arms, tremors rippling under his skin, he coughed. Choked on the effort and expectorated a sticky, crimson mass to the broken pavement at their feet.
    Simon’s grip tightened. “Losing it, huh?”
    The missionary didn’t have to say anything. It was obvious. Whatever degeneration affected the Salem subjects, it hit fast and it hit hard.
    A goddamned bang.
    “Yeah, you and everyone else,” he said grimly. “I got you, Fisher. Don’t struggle.” Simon braced his shoulder under Jonathan’s, leveraged him to the pavement and away from the kitchen exit. Carefully, he wiped the rim of pink foam from the witch’s lips with his sleeve.
    No one followed him. The bundle of sensory nodes in his awareness remained gathered in the diner proper, only a couple remaining in what he assumed was the kitchen. He’d know if someone detached from the group.
    It’d give him time to see to a man who’d never been his friend but who shared a part of Simon’s past. And his future.
    Jonathan deserved better than to go like this.
    The man gasped for air as it rattled through his lungs, his eyes wide and staring. Not quite sightless. Aware enough that as Simon bent over him, Jonathan reached up and grabbed his shoulder in a grip that bit.
    Simon couldn’t be sure, but as waves of power pressed outward, rippling from the dying man’s skin, he guessed the overkill was wearing down his body. Eating at it to fuel its own power surge.
    Shutting him down.
    “Damn,” Simon muttered. “Fisher, you look like hell.”
    “Feel it,” he croaked. But his mouth twisted, a caricature of a smile. “No . . .” He coughed, hard enough to force bloody saliva from his throat. “No coincidence, right? You. Here.”
    “No coincidence.”
    Jonathan’s laugh died in a choking spasm.
    Grimacing, Simon covered the man’s hand on his shoulder and waited for the worst to pass.
    “Knew about Hannah. Peter and . . . rest. Too late for them. You . . . you, too?” Jonathan demanded, trying to raise his head.
    Simon met the man’s eyes, brown and shimmering in a bottomless well of pain and, somewhere in there, recognition. He saw himself in Fisher’s eyes.
    A laughable concept, if it weren’t too close to the truth.
    “Me, too,” Simon agreed. “Carver bit it last night.”
    “Too soon.” Even on the verge of implosion, the man didn’t give up.
    Simon could have liked him. If . . . well, if everything had been different. “Yeah. Hannah and Carver didn’t last nearly as long. We hold the dubious distinction of lasting the longest.”
    Fisher grunted, scorn and—not that Simon could blame him—anger.
    Simon covered his hand with his own. “You’re on the list, buddy. You want me to leave you alone?”
    He wouldn’t, but what did it cost him to let Fisher have a say in his own end? One way or another, he’d die. Either at Simon’s hand or at the end of a long, bloody breakdown.
    Simon had only made it down here in time for this by pure luck. How many other Salem witches were suffering like this? Like Carver?
    Simon couldn’t be everywhere.
    The man didn’t disappoint him. Letting his head fall back to the spongelike growth infesting the uneven asphalt, Fisher took a deep, rattling breath.
    “Nah,” he managed hoarsely. Lightly, even. “End it clean, while you . . . while you can. Took forever to get . . . rid of Miles. Good kid.”
    “Seems like it.”
    He frowned. “Simon, this won’t end . . . You just—” Phlegm caught in his throat. Gargled.
    “Easy—”
    “Be careful,” Jonathan gasped out. He closed his eyes, fingers twisting in Simon’s wet shirt. Stretched